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Busy Busy Summer!

This month’s blog is dedicated to my wonderful sister-in-law Katie, who gets on James’ case when ‘it’s time for me to blog again!’ I am very glad for the accountablility because I love to blog, but it’s been hard to find the time lately! Well, here I am at 11 o’clock at night getting it done on a super slow computer just for Katie! 🙂 I know that she’s also pretty bored, having broken her nose, getting surgery done on it, and having time off of work to recover. The boys and I have been praying for you, Katie!

Work on Shaw Island

This last month has been full! I’ve been exhausted a lot, but all in all it’s been a good month. Liesel is at such a fun age, and I just love hanging out with the boys.

James worked out on Shaw Island for a total of four weeks. Here’s a picture of the amazing view on his ferry ride:

James would camp out on the island several times a week to save on ferry costs. I was plenty busy with the three kids and planning Bradley childbirth classes, but one evening I got this crazy idea that I had to have a haircut RIGHT NOW! So I did. At home. I watched a few youtube videos, got out the scissors, and cut my own hair!This is completely out of character for me, but here it is:

Another thing I must have done out of boredom on the evenings James was gone: take sleeping pitures of the kids. I hadn’t done that since he went to Louisiana last year! Notice, Liesel no longer requires swaddling! My baby is growing up!

The frst week that James worked on Shaw, the boys didn’t see him from Sunday night until Thursday afternoon. When he came back they let him know that they were in desperate need of his attention. Aslan especially showed this in some not-so-subtle (or nice) ways. James spent some extra time cuddling them before putting them in their beds that night. We’ve talked with Aslan a lot since then, and in the next weeks he seemed to handle James’ returns better. James also made sure to talk with the boys on the phone and give them special attention when he got home. James is such an awesome Papa.

Bremerton Trips

On two of the Saturdays this month, we were crazy enough to all get up at 4 something in the morning and head out to Bremerton to see my dad, who is giving us a jeep. I woke up the boys. At first they resisted, until I told them that we were going to go drive the car onto a huge boat and then ride it across the water. Their eyes grew big, and then a slow too-good-to-be-true smile crept across their faces. They must have thought they were dreaming! Here we are on the first fairy ride. The wind surprised them. Daring Shiloh ran into it cackling, while Aslan held back, but then wanted more once it was time to go inside.

The jeep needed a new water pump, so James was going to switch it out, we’d all have fun visiting, and then we were supposed to drive it home. Things didn’t work out quite as planned, but I’m glad that we realized other problems before we hit the road with the jeep. After 2 weeks out there and the help and equipment of several of Dad’s friends, James figured out what’s wrong. It’ll take yet another trip to do the final fixing, though.

Even though things didn’t go exaclty as planned, I’m glad for the time that we got to spend out there with my dad. The family drives went quite smoothly (except when I had to pull out all of James’ arm-hair to keep him awake), James and my dad got better aquainted, the boys and I got to know my step-mom ‘Grandma Laurie’ a bit, we got to see my grandpa (who I hadn’t seen in about 10 years!), I taught my dad a bit about how to use facebook, and we got some first-hand experience of the neat little neighborhood that my dad lives in.

Here’s my dad:

Exhausted children, Grandma Laurie, and me:

A generational picture of my grandpa, dad, me, and Liesel:

Liesel

Liesel is turning into a fun little rascal baby. She knows how to get attention, and she waves and claps. One day after James mowed the lawn, he decided to soak his feet. Liesel thought it looked like fun!

She has also been familiarizing herself with the Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth,

eating black beans,

taking sink baths,

and turning 8 months old!

Father’s Day

The boys and I had an awesome time preparing for ‘Papa’s Day.’ I decided to let them each do their own project, and they really enjoyed getting individual attention from me as well as having a unique gift of their own to give. Aslan’s gift was inspired by Michael’s. For buying one of their t-shirts (which we were going to do anyway) you could come in and use their paints to decorate it with a cute little fish made out of the child’s hand. I took the shirt home, traced all three kids’ hands, and brought it back for Aslan to paint. It was messy work, and Aslan took it super seirously. We made the gills of the fish out of the initial of their first names. Aslan shows everyone the L, S, and A and tells them what they mean. He loves letters and knows how to spell his own name and Shiloh’s out loud. I’m thinking that I’m going to start feeling out if he’s ready to start learnin to read.

Since Shiloh is my ever-faithful kkitchen helper, I let him make the food part of the celebration. There was an interest in Oreo cookies since my dad gave the boys a shape game of plastic Oreos. I have not been able to find any gluten and dairy free Oreo substitutes, so Shiloh and I made our own creation. We used the recipe for chocolate cookies off of the Trader Joe’s brownie mix, then Shiloh spread ‘ricemellow’ from the Food Coop on the cookies for the filling. I think it’s more of a filling/frosting than it is a marshmellow substitute. Our Oreos were far better than any others’ I’ve ever eaten, and far bigger, too! James has been begging for more of them.

We love you James! You’re an awesome Papa!

Camping

After a late, awesome Friday night with the Lawrences and then breakfast with them in the morning, we drove out to Colonial Creek Campground past Newhalem. We hiked for a while to find the Kaplans and the Hastings, but we didn’t get to see any really great sites because we turned around and walked back with Larry and his freshly caught fish. Aslan asked a ton of questions about the fish and how it died. He loves animals, but he is okay with the idea of killing something ‘nicely’ for food. He looked at the hook that Larry caught the fish on and we explained how fish have to be in water to live. Such a curious boy with insightful questions!

The afternoon was great fun. While the Kaplan girls took their nap, our boys rode on Cati’s bike with training wheels and Rohannah’s trike. Can you guess who rode what? (Neither of our boys had ever used pedals before as they’ve only riden in our lawn.) Shiloh did great going downhill on the bike, in beween the crashes of course. He put his feet up on the pedals and turned them around. With my help, he could even get the bike going uphill a bit but didn’t quite have the coordination to keep the pedals turning. Aslan felt more comfortable on the trike and kept his feet on the ground, moving himself up and down the paved hill. There was nowhere flat that we could go to. I can’t wait to teach them to ride!

The End

These two random pictures are: an optical illusion of Liesel pushing Aslan’s box over, and Shiloh showing off the rainbow we made by mixing paints.

Even I am surprised by everything we’ve done in the last month! Maybe that has something to do with why I’ve been so tired all the time. It seems that I didn’t have any sustaining energy for about 2 weeks. After we went to Bremerton the first time, we all got sick, and I am just now feeling like I’ve recovered from that. In fact, I took up drinking coffee (and I’ve always hated coffee). It’s grown on me, as long has it’s half milk and has plenty of sweetener! Sometimes it’s worked to bring me out of an exhausted stupor, and other times it hasn’t.

Also, Liesel is currently asleep with a fever that we can’t figure out… She’s strong and alert, but has had an unexplained fever for two days. I may end up taking her to the doctor today if she doesn’t start getting better.

So, this last picture pretty much sums up what I’d like to be doing right now, though I don’t think I’ll get to. It’s not in the middle of the night that I’m finishing this blog, it’s 8:30 in the morning! (Yes, I did take a break to sleep.) I’m hoping that all of my sentences make sense!

So it’s off to clean and plan for a Bradley class on the first stage of labor while Liesel sleeps and the boys play outside. I’ll have to find time to sleep later!

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2 Responses

Yay! What’s funny is, I was clicking on my bookmark to your blog thinking “Will she ever blog again?” 🙂 What can I say, I enjoy your writing. Well, thanks for the update on everything. I certainly feel special for the dedication. Hopefully I’ll see you guys soon.

And apologize to all. I just reread the blog and found a ton of typos! The computer was acting up and usually I’d see what I wrote about 15 seconds AFTER I typed it. This made editing very interesting…